Super Bowl Sick Days

We’ve just published the results of a survey we did this week of 1430 full time adult workers regarding the likelihood that the Super Bowl will impact their attendance at work on Monday. According to our survey, 3% or about 1.5 million workers are likely to call in sick while another 4.4 million are likely to arrive late after having celebrated the big game.

Super Bowl-related absences could be particularly striking for organizations with a high population of Gen X and Gen Y employees, as the majority of the employed adults who say they may call in sick the day after the Super Bowl are males and females between the ages of 18-34 years (4 percent and 3 percent, respectively). Does that mean that the boomers are more responsible, or just that they can’t stay awake long enough on a “school night” to impact their ability to go to work the next day?

According to the Wall Steet Journal today, “U.S. employment unexpectedly tumbled last month for the first time in more than four years, fueling worries that the U.S. economy, which already limped into 2008, might soften further or even slip into recession in coming months. Nonfarm payrolls fell 17,000 in January, the Labor Department said Friday, the first drop since August 2003, when payrolls slid 42,000.” Super Bowl or not, those workers thinking about blowing off Monday might want to think twice about the message they could be sending to employers who may be managing to tighter workforce budgets.